I have lived through storms
they have become my address
my mark will be there
for those who want to find me
I have cried a lot
I have laughed uproariously
the sign of all this
I left floating in the flood
swirling in the whirlpool
I have forgotten
when you passed by me
speeding like monsoon clouds
overflowing like rivers
you filled me with laughter and loving
as quickly as dreams shatter
even when held in caring hands
the deluge drowned my dreams
and carried my traces to distant shores
windblown and lost to me
dear fallen leaves
should the cloudy dreams of your heart
seek me again
I will cry and laugh as I did before
I will ride the tide again
as again I leave my seal on the lightning
and on death itself
where forever you will find me
----------------------
inspired by Salil Chaudhury’s Bengali lyric, which became a very popular, punchy song sung by Hemant Kumar, to Salil Chaudhury’s own musical score
aided by Ms. Bhashwati Sengupta
-----------------------
Update: Anant Maranganti, Ph.D. wrote:
Images match words and all of them blur into a sensual experience whose boundaries are impossible to fix - This is really about life and death, in a universal sense, not about any particular life and death or is it ?
Just for a moment, before I let go of myself, I puzzled over how the imprint of French existentialists of the 1960s could have blended beyond recognition with the early 20th century American transcendentalists into a fiercely Indian sensibility. But then I let go. I am content with the realization that the song belongs to genre of experience that I can shamelessly gulp down - moist, breezy, excited, throbbing like a frog in a rainforest.
I recognize this particular impulse to draw on something from the past as different from other impulses. It is an odd one - it is one of those impulses that helps me feel at once contemporaneous and timeless and forget that grating voice that accuses me of being an imposter in a masquerade.
Thank you for sharing it.
--------------------------
My reply:
Dear Anant:
Your gushing was emotionally as overpowering as the tears of joy and hurt that gushed through the lines I wove. I am very touched, first by your reading my lament–laughter, and then by your mulling it over with such profusion of emotion that now I cannot decide whether my poem is actually not surpassed by your reaction.
Throbbing like a frog which cannot leap, but cannot but dwell only in a rainforest,
Ramesh Gandhi
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5 comments:
What a beautiful composition. Actually it doesn't read at all like a translation.
It has a pure life of its own.
For those who haven't heard the song, you might want to give the link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1JsQw8P6oxM&feature=related
Read it a few more times.
It is such a seamless blend of force and flow, the has been and the yet to be.
Definitely it isnt a translation. Why did i think of it as one when you mentioned quite clearly that it was inspired by the song's lyrics.
Really good.
the photos obviously came before the poem did.
the way they match would indicate otherwise though.
Images match words and all of them blur into a sensual experience whose boundaries are impossible to fix - This is really about life and death, in a universal sense, not about any particular life and death or is it ?
Just for a moment, before I let go of myself, I puzzled over how the imprint of French existentialists of the 1960s could have blended beyond recognition with the early 20th century American transcendentalists into a fiercely Indian sensibility. But then I let go. I am content with the realization that the song belongs to genre of experience that I can shamelessly gulp down - moist, breezy, excited, throbbing like a frog in a rainforest.
I recognize this particular impulse to draw on something from the past as different from other impulses. It is an odd one - it is one of those impulses that helps me feel at once contemporaneous and timeless and forget that grating voice that accuses me of being an imposter in a masquerade.
Thank you for sharing it.
I had to think about Salil and Hemant combination to remember the song. I had to read the lines two three times and once I got the clue about the address, I knew the song.
The problem for me was, I was too young to remember and understand the words, and even if there is deeper thought and meaning in those words, the song itself is upbeat and joyful (punchy, as you said), and I would have never made the connection. Now I have to hear the song again and refresh my Bengali.
By the way, what is aided by Ms. Sengupta?
Bhupen
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